Threads
by CreatorsOfWorlds
Summary: Life is a study in relationships: good enemy, good brother, good shinobi. Uchiha Izuna is all three.


_And here at long-last is the answer to the request from _somebodi-else_ for an Izuna fic involving his relationship with Madara and his 'manipulative side', which turned out much longer than I expected, and may make me have to go back over my earlier fics in this series and revise them a bit. I hope it will be enjoyed. And if Izuna is, after all, playing a bit of the 'sacrificial brother' in it, at least be assured he is doing so firmly on his own terms. _

_Clever readers might notice that despite my dislike for the recent manga, I've included a nod to it in Izuna's weapons during his scuffle with Tobirama. I also wanted to fit in that 'Don't trust his pretty words' line somehow, but I had to settle for 'Don't trust the Senju'. _

_Also, there is a cameo by Danzo's father, Shimura Hisoka. _

_Rated M to be safe, because of Uchihas and wartime and Tobirama's language. And headcanon. Always the headcanon._

* * *

_Disclaimer__ - I don't own them. I just write about them, and obsessively rearrange timelines for them. _

* * *

_**Threads**_

_**o**_

'_Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.'_

_- Winston Churchill_

**_o_**

Uchiha Izuna is born in the depths of an underground shelter during the last, vicious days of an unexpected attack upon one of the Uchiha's hidden strongholds, while the tramp of enemy feet can still be heard overhead, and the faint scent of burning wood and cloth still hangs in the air here, in the dark bowels of a broken fort. His mother's bed is his father's cloak, ripped but still serviceable and laid out over the none-too clean floor, and she fights her way past her own exhaustion like any good kunoichi, sets her teeth together and never makes a sound.

She will describe it for him later, when he is old enough, as both he and his elder brother kneel before her, watching with wide eyes as her slender hands dart and wheel like birds, painting the picture of the dark room, the tired, frightened and angry men crowded together, the silent women huddled against the walls. At any other time, she tells them, the birth of a male child would have been greeted with joy, but these are dark and difficult times and death is still only a hairsbreadth away from them all, and the wail of a newborn child could be the sound that reveals them all to the searchers still picking through the ruins overhead. There are many who say it would be a better thing to smother the child before it takes its first breath, than risk the lives of every one of the survivors.

So that there is the time when Uchiha Soichi stands with drawn sword in front of his wife, warning back the other men with his cool, level gaze; while Natsumi cradles Izuna skin against skin, strokes the silky-dark beginnings of hair, softly murmurs to him of the need for silence as if he can understand, offers what little milk she has and croons old lullabies under her breath that she can barely remember from her own childhood. And Izuna, wide dark eyes blinking curiously at his mother, one tiny fist caught in the cloth of her shirt, whimpers softly once, and then remains silent.

In all the rest of the time they crouch hidden beneath the ground; on the difficult western trek through the hills to reach another stronghold and safety with the larger part of the Uchiha's remaining forces, Izuna never makes a sound beyond those pathetic little whimpers. It is only when they finally reach their destination and he is put into the lap of an excitedly babbling little Madara, that he screws up his face in shock at this noisy, _noisy _thing that has entered his world, and announces his displeasure with a series of sharp howls.

As a child, he listens more often than he speaks, quiet and watchful and inheritor of the kind of legacy not even Madara can lay claim to. Izuna has known since the moment of his birth that he cannot trust the world around him to be a safe place.

* * *

"What would you sacrifice to reach your goals?" comes the cool question from the shadows.

Izuna, hair falling loose around his shoulders as he kneels on the cool wooden floor, considers the question. Iga-ryu may have been interested enough in the novelty of a younger son from the oldest of the bloodline clans they despised seeking humble entrance into their ranks, enough so to give him a chance at proving himself, but he is not foolish enough to relax. For the first time in his life, he is completely alone, no Madara to watch his back and no second chances waiting if he fails. "Anything," he finally replies. "Within reason."

"Within what reason?"

Izuna thinks of older brothers and Clan leaderships waiting to be filled, of blood and death and spinning mirrors. "My own," he answers coolly. "Were we not speaking of my goals?"

Thirteen years old, and here the sole representative of his Clan's pride, of what the samurai would term their honor, and yet a short time ago he had knelt before the thoughtful, assessing eyes of the men who led this most hidden of villages, and professed his unworthiness to learn from them. In what many of his own elder Clan members would call betrayal, he had seen opportunity. Izuna knows that here, among the common Clans who long ago forswore the gifts of the Sage, among those that many pure-blood Uchiha would consider little better than animals, there are secrets that his kind, long sapped by their dependence on the crutch of jutsu, have never dreamed of.

"Clever boy." It is not meant as a compliment, and Izuna does not take it as one. He feels exposed here, stripped down to a pair of loose pants and his mind laid bare as well by the eyes he cannot see. The next question comes, swift and vicious and all too knowing. "What would you sacrifice for that elder brother you left behind?"

Madara could not have done it, bowed his head and humbled himself before those he had always seen as lesser beings. He would have raged, demanded, threatened. He would never have come to this place at all. He will be a Clan Head that other Uchiha can look up to and admire, even if they hate him as well, and so it is Izuna who must be everything that Madara cannot be, must be strong enough to support him in a way that no other can.

He knows now that the Mangekyou will never give him that strength. He cannot depend on his sight, the gift that the Uchiha have boasted of for centuries. Perhaps here, in the shadows of Iga-ryu, he will find a way to see with his eyes shut.

Izuna also knows that he has hesitated too long over his reply, shown his thoughts far too clearly on his face, and that the victory of this particular piece of wordplay clearly belongs to his questioner. He falls back upon a tactic he learned long ago while watching the lower-ranking members of his Clan, a metaphorical baring of the throat to a superior. Hands on his knees, palms open and defenceless. Head bent slightly, a weakness conceded, not defended. "I am here," he says, "am I not?"

When a soft, satisfied laugh meets his ears, he knows that he has made the right answer.

* * *

Izuna thinks as he grows, though he is too young to find the words to explain his thoughts to others, that life is a study in relationships. Clan to lord, shinobi to clan, parent to child and brother to brother and friends and enemies and people you never forget, and the wary respect you have to give to whatever land you pitch your tent in for the night. A thousand invisible threads tied to everyone he can see, binding them down, securing them tightly together and holding them into the pattern of their lives.

The first time he sees his brother's shadow flare out sharp and clear-cut on the half-yellow grass behind him, he crawls with silent, speedy determination until he reaches it, sits up and watches with delight as their shadows blend together. Then Madara moves in response to something one of their cousins has called, careless yet of the younger sibling following in his footsteps, and Izuna is left behind.

Soft whimpers, then an angry scream, because he has not yet learned a better way to control his world. Madara's voice, sharp and impatient as he lugs him back inside to their mother. "I don't _want _him now, Kaa-san!"

There will be days when Madara will cling to him in desperation, as if Izuna is the only thing that stands between him and the encroaching dark. In those days, it will be the truth.

Still, these are the words and the days that will shape him.

Eight years old and a step behind his older brother as they watch their father and a few of the senior Uchiha negotiating with the Senju, Clan symbols bared proudly at throat and shoulder and breast. The wind is cold and Izuna shivers. He has long made a study of listening to things that other people do not want him to hear, ever since his mother had explained to him that it was one of the most important parts of being a shinobi, but today he is not trying to sidle closer to his father and the Senju Head.

He is watching Madara watch a Senju boy.

The Senju boy, straight brown hair falling around his shoulders and shoulders set in a proud, straight line, is eyeing Madara back, and Izuna frowns as he looks from one to the other, and sees even without his barely-awakened Sharingan the taut thread that binds one to the other. They will weave a pattern, his brother and this boy, like any good enemy, but right now Izuna's eyes move on, scanning for the shadow behind the obvious - his mother had also told him how every good shinobi does that, looks underneath the underneath.

He finds it in the narrowed eyes and white hair of the boy a step behind the Senju brat that Madara is glaring at - maybe their places are not so different, Izuna thinks, as he sees the white-haired boy glance between the two of them as well and bristle. Then his eyes flick across to meet Izuna's, and widen in surprise for a moment before settling down to a steady, calculating stare.

Something vibrates through Izuna then, like the note of a temple bell, and he glances at his brother to see if he's felt it as well, but Madara is still locked in his staring match with his own opponent. _Don't look at him, oniisan, _he wants to say, but does not. _The one behind him is the one you'll want to watch out for. He's not scared of us - but I think I might be a little scared of him. _

But his brother is making his own history beside him, and another thing Izuna has been taught is that shinobi know when to hold their tongues and keep their own counsel, so he says nothing. He looks back at the white-haired boy and they hold each other's gaze until the talks are finished and their fathers call them apart.

It is not quite six months later that Izuna learns the name of his silent challenger: Senju Tobirama. Another thread.

* * *

"Why should we allow you to learn from us?" A simple question, neither angry nor kind. Perhaps a little curious. "You have said yourself that you will return to your own Clan. Why should we pay away our knowledge when we receive nothing in return?"

Izuna casts his gaze down, and remembers his lessons in fire, the knowledge that if his hand or breath slipped, if he lost focus and concentration, he could expect scorched fingers and burned lips. This, he feels, is much the same. His eyes are dark; he knows that even a flicker of red will destroy what he is trying to do here, but all the same he feels shaky, young and vulnerable because of it. "I may be young," he said quietly, "but I know better than to think that you truly need an answer to either of those questions. They say that Iga-ryu never truly leaves one who has trained here; how much would you have paid for such a foothold in myself, in my Clan?"

And now he is handing it to them, this chance to lay a claim on him that will never quite fade, and he does not want to imagine what Madara would say, because that will make him lose his focus and burned fingers are the least of what he could cost himself here. Intead, Izuna fixes his eyes on the shaft of sunlight gliding slowly, almost imperceptibly, along the stone floor.

Sometimes men trade in copper and gold and silver coins, in silks and grain and precious things. Sometimes they trade in loyalties and thoughts and souls and ideas, on the chance of the coming years and the spaces between one breath and the next.

Before he hears the approving assent from the men who are deciding his fate, Izuna closes his eyes and tells himself that he _knows _it will be worth it, because hoping is not enough, not here.

"I think we will both benefit from this association," he says smoothly, and with those few simple words trades away the next two years of his life.

* * *

As the years pass by, threads are tightened and loosened by time, or cut loose to drift away and be forgotten. Izuna and Madara draw close together in the aftermath of their parents' deaths, and use their newfound Mangekyou to precariously keep their place in the upper echalons of a Clan suddenly at war with itself, swirling from one political extreme to another as it staggers under the blow of Uchiha Soichi's death.

So it is that, despite his youth, Izuna finds himself in the forefront of a skirmish where most of the other troops have respectfully withdrawn some time ago, leaving Uchiha and Senju to try and rip each other to pieces as they struggle back and forth around a castle half in flames. Jutsu has always come slowly and with difficulty for Izuna, and his frailer form cannot sustain the Susano'o as Madara's can, but he pushes himself as hard as he can, twin swords moving in a blur of steel and eyes whirling black and red, the first all too often a ploy to draw an unwary opponent to looking into the second.

Izuna is angry, in a distant way apart from the fight at hand, because this is not, despite the plaudits of the current Uchiha Head, where he can use his best abilities and he aches for the smooth wood of his bow, for the twisted, jumbled fringes of the battle where he can use his smaller stature and agility to pick off the enemy one by one. He knows that Madara will be angry as well, when they are finished with the task at hand, will stalk about stiff-backed and furious like a cat, ranting and swearing that he could do a better job himself. He is growing old enough now, strong enough, that the Clan will have to listen soon.

It is not until he sees a flash of white hair, ridiculously easy to pick out through the smoke-hazed air, that Izuna begins to feel that maybe this is where he should be after all.

If life is a study in relationships then he has to admit that somehow, over the years, Senju Tobirama has made himself a close second in importance to Madara himself, mainly because he is, in Izuna's opinion, the only one of his Clan who actually bothers to see what lies beyond the obvious and then decide what to do about it. As Tobirama seems to have the same opinion of him, the years between the chilly morning they spent glaring at each other and the present day have been filled with meetings of one kind or another, as they inevitably clash again and again.

It was Tobirama who Izuna had shot in the back the first time they met in an open battle; Tobirama who had come hurtling to the defense of the Senju medic Izuna attacked on the field; Tobirama who was always sent out to scout the land ahead at the same time Izuna was; Tobirama who he'd spent yet another chilly morning with in a strange kind of truce, on a battlefield the morning after when they'd talked and talked, half-wary and half delighted beyond belief to find another who _thought_…

And it's Tobirama now who is slamming him viciously back against a wall, knife against his throat and snarling in his ear to _turn them off_, and Izuna does so, as much from shock and weariness as in compliance with his order, and then he thinks to wonder why he isn't dead. Half-hidden in a gap of tumbled stone as they are, there would be no one to see.

"Listen to me, _listen to me," _and he's never seen Tobirama like this before, without a trace of his usual composure or distance, eyes bright and voice unsteady with rage. "I've learned something about those eyes of yours…"

Izuna can feel himself shrinking back against the stone as Tobirama talks on, detailing test after test and three years of careful observation and research in the same fierce, half-raw voice. He does not soften his tone as he talks of grief and trauma and the kind of power that leads to insanity, he does not look away or loosen his grip as he tells Izuna in cold detail what will be the end result if he continues using the Mangekyou, and by the time he finishes he's snarling again, the knife almost drawing blood.

" - And I swear, if I see you using them again I'll _kill _you. I will."

Izuna has no doubt that Tobirama means it. He swallows, carefully, before he finally manages to speak. "Why warn me?"

"Because," Tobirama snaps, "you're the only one in that damn Clan of yours who actually bothers to think, and I will not let you lose that just because the Uchiha fucking worship emotional insanity."

"How very honorable of you," Izuna says coolly, shading his voice with spite and disdain to cover up the confused scramble of his thoughts; the way Tobirama's claims coincide with all the little things he's noted down concerning his Clan over the years. "Maybe all the stories that name you a samurai's son are true."

He feels a quiet little triumph at the truth revealed on Tobirama's face, because he's always wondered about that himself, but more than that he finds himself caught up in the details of the moment, beyond and beneath the words that are said: the little pain at his throat which means that Tobirama's knife has drawn blood after all, the rough stone at his back; the anger and strange-almost fear still written clearly on the Senju boy's face and the way some previous opponent had ripped away half of Tobirama's breastplate and the armour that covered one arm.

He can taste the stink of battle-sweat and blood and smoke in the air; Tobirama is pressed so close that he can feel his breath on his face, and then Izuna takes advantage of his opponent's shaken state to twist, slamming the knife away with his arm guard and shivering at the screech of metal. Tobirama reacts with lightning speed and Izuna knows that there'll be a knife in his other hand without looking; he ducks in close and twists it away from the white-haired boy but fails to take him down, and Tobirama's arm snakes around his neck and tightens - it's bitter and savage and breathless as they fall back on what they _know _they are - good enemies, who've learned each other's patterns over the years.

Izuna's blood is humming madly through his veins as he struggles, as much against the compulsion to activate his Sharingan again as against the arm that Tobirama's trying to choke him with. He doesn't know quite what to do about the vulnerability that he himself showed all too clearly a minute ago, but he remembers the look in Tobirama's eyes and wonders if maybe this is love and twists his head to the side and _bites._

Tobirama makes a strangled sound and pulls his arm away and it's enough, enough for Izuna to scramble away, to scoop up his swords and throw himself back into the main body of the battle, allowing the struggling, cursing shinobi to sweep them apart.

Panting hard and bone-weary, he pulls the shattered pieces of his focus around himself, and takes a moment longer than he should to locate Madara. The tide of the battle is already turning, and his elder brother is at the forefront of it, pushing back Senju Hashirama step by step.

Izuna follows him.

* * *

"My father thought that you did well today."

Izuna allows his mouth to curve into a small grimace as he bends his head over the contents of one of his pouches. "I had not noticed. The last time he spoke to me, he told me that my grasp of silent motion was no better than that of a six-year old child."

Shimura Hisoka kneels next to him on the spare grass, and Izuna glances up at him, taking in the other boy's earnest, utterly serious face. Hisoka is slowly becoming a good friend, despite the differences between their upbringing, but sometimes Izuna thinks that he was born without any sense of humor or irony, or more likely that his father, the current head of their Clan, has trained it out of him. He has not seen Shimura Osamu so much as smile since he has come into Iga's hidden village.

"That was yesterday," Hisoka says. "Today, he didn't say anything. That means that he thinks you are doing well."

The two of them share the distinction of being the sons of their Clans' leaders, even if Izuna's father is now dead and gone. Hisoka often asks Izuna questions concerning those shinobi Clans who had accepted the Sage's gift, and Izuna tells him little of the Uchiha, more of other Clans he had seen or heard tales of over the years. He watches with a quiet amusement, kept buried deep for the sake of their burgeoning friendship, as Hisoka all too obviously struggls to define his fascination with other cultures as something his father would approve of, and finally seems to settle on considering it as simply another means of gathering information which might be useful at some later point.

"My father," Izuna observes lightly, "would tell me in so many words when he thought I had done well." But that is not the way in Iga-ryu; he slams a mental door tight shut on the emotions which wait to break out at the memory of his father, and concentrates on that. Here, there is little to no expression of emotions or strong feeling, even between close kin.

It is enough to make Izuna ache with longing for the excess and drama of his own Clan, even the darker and more twisted parts of it, annoying though he had found it when he was with them. He thinks again of Madara. Yet another reason his tumultuous, outspoken elder brother would have been unable to accept what Iga-ryu had to offer.

As expected, Hisoka has ignored the tone in which Izuna had spoken, and is now seriously considering his statement. "They were very different," he says finally. "And yet, I have heard my father say that Uchiha Soichi was one of the few -" a pause, in which Izuna is sure Hisoka is searching for a politer term than the one Osamu had used - "jutsu-users that he respected. Even though there was little chance of it, he hoped someday to meet him in battle face to face."

"Indeed?" Izuna says, surprised despite himself. That seems unlike Osamu, who more than once has lectured him fiercely on the lesser importance of battle skills as compared to other things.

Hisoka nods. "He told me that he had the chance once," he says, "when the daimyo he then served stormed one of the Uchiha's strongholds in revenge for the death of his son. In the eastern mountains of Fire Country. But a part of the garrison escaped somehow, and he and Soichi never met."

Izuna's hand freezes on the grip of one of the knives he is counting out onto the grass, and for a moment he thinks he can hear the tramp of feet overhead, and hear his mother's voice once again telling him the story of his birth and almost-death.

A study in relationships, he had thought once. Threads that bound one soul, one clan to another, and interwove through the years until they broke or became one. This is merely more proof, and no reason to become excited, but for a moment Izuna's breath grows short and he struggles to grasp how the years have woven together and brought him to this moment, this knowledge.

Then he composes his thoughts and inclines his head to Hisoka. "Thank you for telling me," he says calmly, "I had not known."

* * *

Madara can barely stop touching him, and the rest of the Clan keeps its distance; Izuna smiles politely at all and keeps his head down and his eyes dark. It is thanks to Madara and the power he now commands that such words as _treason _and _desertation _are never spoken, but there are certain words which by old tradition any elder Uchiha may speak to a younger - especially if it concerns that younger one's recently returned brother - and on many days Madara is reduced to snapping and snarling when they are alone together.

Izuna closes his eyes, soaks the sounds of his voice in, and nods or shakes his head at what he judges to be the appropriate points. When Madara has finished ranting he will sit down and speak seriously, and then Izuna can offer up his own observations.

He wonders, in the back of his mind, where Tobirama is now. They've not met again, in battle or outside of it, since Izuna returned, and it's quite possible that the Senju boy is not aware of it as yet.

Izuna has only grown more keenly appreciative of the danger Tobirama poses to the Uchiha in the time he's been away, considering the way he was able to extract information concerning their bloodline that the Uchiha themselves were too proud and too ignorant to take notice of; and even now refuse to believe. Intelligent as he is, Izuna is sure that the past two years will not have been idle ones for him.

He thinks for one moment of rough stone against his back and Tobirama's ragged breathing and _if I see you using them again I'll _kill _you, I will _and considers for the space of one minute, coolly and rationally, the kinds of things that it is safe for good enemies to feel for each other. Tobirama had stepped outside the pattern, and whatever his reason for doing it, that has made him doubly dangerous in Izuna's eyes.

This naturally brings his train of thought to the number of times he's heard Madara mention Hashirama's name in the past month, and as he counts them up he becomes more than mildly alarmed. He's never been able to trust his elder brother to be entirely rational, especially since the Mangekyou, and he has his doubts about Madara's ability to set boundries for himself.

"Nii-san," he says abruptly, and Madara, who has reached the low grumbling stage, breaks off and looks at him.

"Yes?"

Izuna considers what to say, as he had seven years ago with their lives in front of them and their Clans lined neatly in opposing rows. He discards, _they are dangerous because they have the ability to see what we are. _He discards, _the things we like to call their weaknesses are their strengths, and that is why you should be afraid of them. _He discards, _love has always been a dangerous thing for our Clan and I have the feeling that somehow, everything is going to go wrong._

Madara will accept none of these. He needs something simple, straightforward, and absolute. If he will not set limitations of his own, then Izuna will set them for him.

So Izuna hesitates and then looks his older brother in the eyes and begins with, "Don't trust the Senju."

* * *

_I'm not even sure what I've written anymore, because it's late and I'm tired, but I know it has Izuna in it, and I'm pretty sure that is a Good Thing. Do take the time to leave a review. They are also Good Things._


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